Building Grappling Strength Through Rope Climbing

Establishing good grips in BJJ and Judo is so important as very often when you dominate the grip battle and establish your dominant grips you can control and dominate your opponent. Many top BJJ players use rope climbing as a staple of their daily training. Fernando Margarida was said to have spent at least an hour per day on his rope training.
Rope climbing is fun and you can really feel yourself get better every time.

Benefits of Rope Climbing

1. Grip Strength

2. Arm Strength

3. Back Strength

4. Abdominal Strength

The legendary Vitor Shaolin Ribeiro explains here how to work diffrent chokes and your abs:

“There are three ways of climbing, each of which improves a specific group of moves. In the first exercise (picture A), we use short grips to get to the top, which helps in the chokes executed with the hands near and the arms bent. As he shows, the climb can be made with the hand reversed (picture B). In the following task (picture C) he goes upwards with wider grips, ideal to strengthen a pull from the ground with a hip escape (bottom picture) or any position that demands a strong grip with the arms stretched. The detail is to keep the legs always elevated, which toughens the abs. “You go up, stop for a few seconds with the legs stretched, and then descend in the same fashion,” explains the Nova Uniao professor. “The wider grip is the hardest, so I do it only once a day, five times a week. The other one, easier, I repeat ten times a week, twice on one day, thrice on the next, then twice… Always after training, when the arms are more tired.”

Here is a nice little video of rope climbing after BJJ practice, notice how his legs are elevated in a close guard to work the legs and abs as well: